Viggo Mortensen explains why he turned down the role of Wolverine

Viggo Mortensen is best known for playing Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, if a meeting with X-Men director Bryan Singer went better, he could have been remembered for something very different.

In a recent interview with the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, Mortensen reminisced on the past, a meeting with singer about playing Wolverine, a role that famously ended up going to Hugh Jackman. and why it never came to be. Apparently, Mortensen had some issues with the part. “The thing that bothered me at the time was just the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over,” he said.

It’s true that Mortensen ended up playing Aragorn in three Lord of the Rings movies, all of them filmed pretty close in time, but that’s a far cry from Jackman playing Wolverine in nine movies over the course of nearly two decades. And there’s even talk that he could return for a future project, despite the character dying in Logan. So if Mortensen was worried about being tied down to a role for a while, it was probably a good idea to avoid this one.

Viggo Mortensen’s young son challenged X-Men director Bryan Singer on the script

Beyond that, Mortensen also had issues with the script after seeking advice from his comic-loving son Henry. “I did let Henry read the script and he goes: ‘This is wrong, that’s not how it is’.”

"I was nervous about that. And also there were some things…I mean they straightened most of them out, but I did take Henry to the meeting I had with the director as my sort of good luck charm and guide…And all of a sudden the director is falling all over himself and then the rest of the meeting was him explaining in detail to Henry why he was taking certain liberties."

In hindsight, Bryan Singer did a lot right with X-Men, kick-starting a mega-successful movie franchise. And it’s still going on, with WandaVision importing one of its characters just recently.

As we all know, Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. His 17-year portrayal of the character proved to be one of the greatest superhero castings of all time, alongside the likes of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man or Chris Evans as Captain America. It’s hard to even imagine anyone else playing the adamantium-clawed vigilante.

“I think he did great,” Mortensen said of Jackman’s Wolverine. “I’m sure no-one could imagine anyone doing it better than he did anyway.”

And I’m sure no one could imagine anyone else playing Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy better than Viggo Mortensen. I suppose it all worked out in the end.

And if you feel like another binge of Middle-earth, the Lord of the Rings has never looked better either after Peter Jackson’s 4K remaster recently his theaters!

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h/t Digital Spy